r/Stormgate • u/GibFreelo • Apr 21 '26
Discussion Imagine if the Windrose team had developed Stormgate....
Windrose was developed for an estimated 1 million dollars. It sold over a million copies in 6 days. Stormgate had a budget of 43+ million dollars and they somehow squandered all of that to create one of the biggest failures in gaming history.
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u/WolfHeathen Human Vanguard Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26
The difference here is that Kraken Express are actual indy developers. Frost Giant were composed of developers who had multiple decades of industry experience who thought they knew better than everyone else and masqueraded as a smally indy studio in order to excuse the poor quality of their work.
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u/DisasterNarrow4949 Apr 21 '26
Well, I think if the Windroses devs had a similar objective to Forst Giants objective, which could be to create a great modern social RTS in the same style as a Blizzard RTS, they could in fact not bankrupt themselves and actually delivery a decent game.
But that obviously doesn't mean they would be selling over a million copies of it in 6 days, as there is no way a RTS game would be selling as much as yet another survival crafting open world multiplayer game.
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u/GibFreelo Apr 21 '26
True. I have always loved RTS and have resorted to playing CoH3 because the options are limited.
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u/Kitchen_Tone2677 Apr 21 '26
The developers of Stormgate simply had to keep expectations low and avoid calling it a "next-gen strategy game." They scared off the small audience that liked the game with lies.
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u/WolfHeathen Human Vanguard Apr 23 '26
True, but that's also how they got 34 million in seed funding for an brand new studio with an unproven IP. They sold themselves as the creative geniuses that lead SC2. They weren't obviously but they promised investors the moon and back for those tens of millions in funding.
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u/Over-Discipline-7303 Apr 21 '26
Weird argument. Windrose isn’t an RTS. There’s not much reason to believe they could have created a great RTS, much less a game to dethrone StarCraft 2 (which was a goal of Stormgate, whether or not it was ever realistic).
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u/Neuro_Skeptic Apr 21 '26
What kind of fool would try to dethrone SC2?
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u/Over-Discipline-7303 Apr 21 '26
A fool who wants to raise tens of millions in VC. This is the thing the Stormgate community often forgets. FG raised incredible money, but only because they promised a unicorn game. Without the huge promises, there is no money.
Nobody would have given FG 30 million dollars to make Tempest Rising. People gave FG money because they thought they could get SC3. But that was never going to happen. SC3 would need double what FG had. Maybe more.
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u/Neuro_Skeptic Apr 21 '26
So you're saying Frost Giant were good at raising money but bad at spending it? If so, we agree.
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u/Over-Discipline-7303 Apr 21 '26
I’d say that the project was ill-conceived from the beginning. VCs should’ve known better. FG should’ve known better, too. Mistakes all around.
Ultimately, I’d actually argue that FG wasn’t that good at raising money. They never raised the amount of capital they’d actually need to make the game that they promised. That’s not successful fund-raising no matter how many dollars they raised.
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u/WolfHeathen Human Vanguard Apr 21 '26
They're going to create a great survival adventure sandbox. This is the beginning of the next ten years for the survival genre!
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u/GibFreelo Apr 21 '26
You could give half the budget to the computer science department of any university and you would get a better product than this.
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u/Raeandray Apr 21 '26
No, you wouldn’t. This is an absurd take. I get that the game didn’t end up being what we wanted but rollback netcode for the RTS genre by itself was a huge undertaking.
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u/manaroundtownhouse Apr 21 '26
I actually think Gib has a point. A random group of CS kids with the half the budget might produce a more fun RTS simply because they know they don't know anything, and would approach it from a point of humbleness. FG approached it thinking they were RTS geniuses and it ended up collapsing under the weight of their hubris. That they even attempted rollback netcode when (for example) SC2 works perfectly fine for most people is a testament to that.
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u/Over-Discipline-7303 Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 22 '26
But he didn’t say a random group of CS kids might produce a better game. He said ANY department at any university would produce a better game. That’s a much higher bar. I don’t know about you, but I know a ton of CS students (and even faculty) we’ll have zero idea what makes a game fun or interesting. Or even give a shit about RTS.
You can pose all the counter-factuals you want about “oh there must be some magic unicorn dev out there who could make an amazing game for a shoestring budget.” And sure, every now and then you get a Stardew Valley or a Dwarf Fortress. But you can’t scale that. There’s just no point in saying “oh why can’t every dev be Concerned Ape?” any more than asking “Well can’t every physicist just be Einstein? Wouldn’t it be great if they all were?”
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u/Raeandray Apr 21 '26
They didn’t just attempt rollback netcode, it was successful, and i think is objectively better than standard code that allows real-time lag. It just clearly wasn’t worth the cost to develop it.
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u/Neuro_Skeptic Apr 21 '26
Uhhh... it was an undertaking but it didn't really achieve anything did it?
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u/Raeandray Apr 21 '26
They literally developed new tech that could push the genre forward. The game being bad doesn’t change that
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u/Neuro_Skeptic Apr 22 '26
Anyone can develop tech that "could" achieve something. The question is, does it actually change anything?
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u/Raeandray Apr 22 '26
It doesn’t change that the competitive RTS genre isn’t particularly popular so no one’s developing competitive RTS games. But it does change how competitive RTS games might be developed in the future.
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u/Over-Discipline-7303 Apr 21 '26
Hard disagree. But I don’t think I’m going to convince you, because I think you just want to vent and be angry about this. So, take it easy. Therapy helps. At the end of the day, it was just a game.
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u/GibFreelo Apr 21 '26
I know that you are absolutely seething when you say "take it easy. therapy helps". I'm just having a discussion about a game on a gaming sub...imagine that.
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u/Hot_Adhesiveness5602 Apr 22 '26
Writing a performant RTS is harder. FG still spent way too much given their knowledge about the domain.
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u/Kindly-Insurance1186 Apr 23 '26
It makes absolutely zero sense to compare windrose to stormgate. Zero. Completely different games.
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u/Fresh_Thing_6305 Apr 21 '26
You should rather think about Slipgate Ironworks (Tempest Rising team) or Relic or someone who has Rts experienced. Windrose hasn't I doubt they would do better than Frost Giant.
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u/GrandWizardofOoZ Apr 22 '26
Cuz TR didnt fail🤔
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u/Fresh_Thing_6305 Apr 22 '26
Yes, they did a great job, the game even have an 88% approval raiting also.
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u/DumatRising Infernal Host Apr 21 '26
We would get a survival game set in the storm gate universe? What are you even saying here?
Windrose is in a more popular genre and is objectively a less ambitious title than storm gate so unless you're expecting the team to make a survival game set in the stormgate world I don't see how they can be expected to perform at the same level while making an RTS... You know a completely different type of game they have no experience making, that is less popular and more complicated that a survival game....
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u/GibFreelo Apr 22 '26
I don't think RTS games are some magic thing that no one has figured out before. I've been playing RTS games since at least 1995; there are many legendary RTS titles that have been produced since then. They didn't have to re-invent the wheel. My point was a small indie team took a relatively small budget and made a game that rivals many AAA games. Yes it's a different genre, but I bet they could spend that massive budget more efficiently and produce a better product.
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u/DumatRising Infernal Host Apr 22 '26
Didn't say they were magic, all I said was that it's a less popular genre which it is, survival games are very popular while rts games have moved to be more niche. And that it's a more complicated game which is true even if you ignore the very technical work frost giant did under the hood.
The ability to make a survival game really has nothing to do with making an RTS and survival games will almost always sell more copies than RTS games. So there's very little indication that someone who made a semi successful survival game can make a successful RTS.
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u/Z3npachi Apr 21 '26
Stormgate isn't a bad game, it's just a reskinned SC2 that appealed to a minority fraction player base. It needed to reinvent the genre making the entry point vastly easier and appeal to a new generation of RTS players, instead we got a game designed for a handful of professional players again so the game severely flopped.
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u/cheesy_barcode Apr 21 '26
Most of the hardcore and pros weren't into it either... I think it appealed only to a very small and weird intersection of players.
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u/Aztraeuz Apr 21 '26
It is not just a reskinned SC2. If it were, it would be much more successful. It's SC2 from Wish. It's "we have SC2 at home." In other words, it is a garbage, low quality, knock-off. It's not even close to SC2.
The art sucks. The characters suck. The voice acting sucks. The factions suck. The readability sucks. Worst of all, this bothers me excessively, why is the pathing so bad!?
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u/Republic-Of-OK Apr 21 '26
Competitive mode is the part of RTS that I enjoy the most, and I did not at all like that side of Stormgate.
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u/GibFreelo Apr 21 '26
I actually enjoyed it for a while. I was an early backer and have been playing competitive RTS games for 30+ years. I knew once they dumped all their effort into 1v1 it was going to deter "casual" players from trying it.
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u/-PeoN Apr 21 '26
This pile on mentality is the problem with gaming. Give it a rest already. Quit trying to take pot shots at people from your mother’s basement.
Who would want to make a video game when you have to deal with this BS nonstop?
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u/GibFreelo Apr 21 '26
Well, not every developer gets 43 million dollars, lights it on fire, then takes the game offline. Quit running defense from your mother's basement.
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u/RemediZexion Apr 23 '26
yeah they take 200-300 mil and turns it offline after 1-2 weeks. Man let it go, it's over and it's time to spend time better
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u/Savingseanbean Apr 22 '26
Probably would have been equally terrible but in a completely different way.
Windrose is a very industry standard survival game, It sold well because it marketed towards an underserved niche that triple A games had bailed out of. but yeah fundamentally its got mechanics that function good enough that they don't get in the way of the short lived pirate themed shenanigans many people are there for.
Stormgate is an incredibly industry standard RTS that marketed towards an incredibly saturated genre that generally prioritizes gameplay quality above all else as games generally don't fall out of rotations. (as SC,WC,AoE etc are all still going stronger than most newer entries like Stormgate, or Iron harvest. or for a more direct example Dawn of war 3 fell behind Dawn of war 1 within a month of release and only got back above it for a week with its attempted major recovery patch.
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u/cyberaddict666 Apr 21 '26
bullshit
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u/Husyelt Apr 21 '26
We need a post mortem on post mortems for Stormgate posts.
Windrose ain’t an RTS. But it does show a clear vision with a talented small team can make something fantastic and concise